NASA’s first asteroid sample is the most pristine of its kind.
Now, back on Earth, the sample from asteroid Bennu has already yielded surprising findings about the early solar system and where the asteroid may have come from.
After a seven-year journey to asteroid Bennu and back, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft dropped its sample of rocks and dirt collected from the primitive asteroid last year in the Utah desert.
It took some time to carefully remove the lid from the sample box, but even the first bits of asteroid from the lid were rich in carbon, an essential element for all life on Earth.
Scientists with NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Sample Analysis Team released their early findings on the Bennu sample.
They say they have found organic compounds.
The sample also contained the surprising finding of magnesium-sodium phosphate, which the spacecraft’s imaging team could not see through spectrum data on the asteroid.
OSIRIS-REx spent several years mapping the asteroid before the touch-and-go maneuver to collect the sample.
University of Central Florida astronomy and physics professor Humberto Campins served on the OSIRIS-REX science team during the OSIRIS-REx mission and said the team expected to find hydrated minerals, or minerals that react with water.
“But the magnesium sodium phosphates are the result of a hydration process … indicating a very complex fluid, chemical reactions or reactions in the Bennu parent,” said Campins, who was not involved in the new study. “We still don’t understand. Studying this in detail will tell us a lot more about what was going on with the parent.”
The findings indicated that Bennu’s parent world was probably one with water.
“The presence and condition of phosphates, along with other elements and compounds in Bennu, suggest an aqueous past for the asteroid,” said Dante Lauretta, lead author of the paper and principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona. Tucson. “Bennu could potentially have once been part of a wetter world. However, this hypothesis requires further investigation.”
Just the beginning of Bennu surprises
The latest findings are more proof that the OSRIS-REx team picked the right asteroid to bring a piece back to Earth. According to NASA, the sample analysis team finds something new every week.
The discoveries from Bennu will soon be a global scientific initiative.
Dozens of labs in the US and around the world are set to receive portions of the Bennu samples from NASA’s Johnson Space Center.
Campins said he expected much more research and discovery from the champion now that he is on Earth.
“It’s going to be a very interesting couple of years,” Campins said. “It’s starting to give us a different picture, a different set of data, to try to understand the most primitive material in the solar system, which are probably related to the origin of water on Earth, maybe related to the origin of organic molecules in Earth. , which was a prime motivator for this mission.”
Having a pristine sample of an asteroid formed 4.5 billion years ago, unaltered by Earth’s atmosphere or other contamination, will help scientists answer critical questions about how life formed on Earth.
Campins said it is possible that Bennu could help answer the fundamental question of what was “the step between the most complex organic molecule and the first living cell.”
The spacecraft is operating under a new name and a new mission.
The new OSIRIS-APEX mission will study the asteroid Apophis when it flies by Earth in 2029. This encounter will be close enough that we can see the asteroid from Earth without the aid of a telescope.
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